


Anisoptera

by acalmingcupoftea



Category: Elementary (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-27
Updated: 2013-11-27
Packaged: 2018-01-02 18:47:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,601
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1060280
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/acalmingcupoftea/pseuds/acalmingcupoftea
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Sherlock asks Joan for a most perplexing favor.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Anisoptera

**Author's Note:**

  * For [cerie](https://archiveofourown.org/users/cerie/gifts).



> Thanks to specialrhino for the beta!
> 
> Look up the title after you've read the fic or spoilers! ;)

The evening November air chilled the Brownstone, causing Joan Watson to pull her sweater tighter across her body. She had told Sherlock that they should close the windows at night as it got colder. His response had taken a total of 35 minutes to explain, and had cited several recent medical publications about the benefits of fresh air on the body and an ancient Nordic myth about an ice queen.

Still slightly chilled, Joan readjusted the glasses on her face and resumed reading the most recent article about gardening techniques that Sherlock had given her. 

_It can’t all be lockpicking and espionage,_ she thought to herself with a sigh.

As if summoned by her boredom, Sherlock burst into the room.

“Watson! I want you to give me a tattoo,” he said, gesturing for her to follow him to their desks – really _his_ desks –, where he stored his tattoo machine and a variety of inks.

Joan, setting her article aside and removing her glasses, said incredulously, “Excuse me?”

“I want you to give me a tattoo.” Sherlock repeated, emphasizing each word with a hand gesture.

“And why in the _world_ would I do that?” Joan asked, crossing her arms in front of her, a smug look appearing on her face. She doubted even Sherlock would have a rational explanation for that.

“Because you are curious as to why I would ask you for such a thing. An answer which, as any good pupil of mine would have deduced, is not something I will tell you until the task has been completed.” Sherlock turned on his heel and began to stride out of the room, fully confident she would follow him.

“And,” he said over his shoulder, “you want to see if you can do it as well as I can.”

Joan sat in her chair for a moment. She looked at the abandoned gardening article and, deciding that Sherlock’s out of the blue tattoo request was more interesting, pushed herself out of the chair and followed him.

As she had taken her time to decide, Sherlock had been clearing away – i.e. throwing on the floor – the files from their current case.

“Hey! Be careful with those.” Joan exclaimed as Sherlock unceremoniously dropped three piles of carefully stacked papers onto what appeared to be a first edition book of Keats poetry – lovingly adorned with a mug stain on the cover – and a sprig of lettuce left out for Clyde.

“Chaos breeds creativity, Watson! Now, shall I remove my trousers or my shirt?” Sherlock remarked, starting to undo his belt.

“Shirt! Shirt is fine.” Joan said, covering the air between her and Sherlock with her hands.

He quickly removed his vest and button down, tossing them haphazardly in the direction of a chair. Sherlock then gave a small twirl as if he were expecting his trousers to furl like a dress. When he faced Joan again, hands outstretched and with an expectant expression, he said, “Anywhere you like, except the face.” 

Had Joan not already decided to go through with this escapade, Sherlock’s cavalier attitude in offering his body as a canvas could have fazed her. It always surprised her how difficult she found it to make the tiniest decisions sometimes, especially since in an operating room she was quick and decisive. But as things were, she merely considered her options. She could tattoo his neck or his chest, but 1) staring him in the face the entire time seemed less than ideal and 2) the tattoo would be in plain sight a lot of the time, reminding her of her sub-par art skills.

She wasn’t terrible, but growing up with her brother, she could never consider herself particularly skilled. Throughout their school days, Oren’s art would always be proudly displayed on the classroom walls or showcased in the school art show. He even made cartoons for their high school newspaper. Joan’s art would be in the bottom corner of the art display and she never held her breath to get into the art show, let alone headline it.

Joan twirled her finger as she said, “Back, I think.” Sherlock compiled by turning one of their chairs around and straddling it, his back facing her.

“You’ll find gloves and all the necessary antiseptics in the drawer on your left,” Sherlock said as Joan pulled up a chair and sat down behind him. “The machine and all the inks are laid out on the counter. I wouldn’t make your first piece too intricate but I’m not one to stand in the way of artistic genius.”

Joan rolled her eyes at him, though he couldn’t see it, and set to work picking a spot to place the tattoo. This was a chance for her to enact revenge on Sherlock for all the ridiculous things he had put her through. 

The fake assailants in the Brownstone to test her self defense skills. The blind taste tests of various things, most of them not food, in order to better refine her palette. The time he set the kitchen on fire, so she could “master the art of running from a burning room at absolute top speed.”

_A “tramp stamp” almost seems too easy, though. Too obvious and cliche_ , she thought, deciding to take the task more seriously. After staring at Sherlock’s back for a solid five minutes, Joan decided to place whatever her design might be on the lower left side of Sherlock’s back, underneath his “26.2” tattoo.

She slowly started wiping down that area of Sherlock’s skin, buying herself time to think of an idea. Of course, Sherlock would ask for a tattoo and not even _provide a design._

A skull? No, too overdone. A bird? No, that really didn’t seem like Sherlock. Something simple, like a circle or a box? But that would be near impossible to draw well freehand and would be too pretentious, even for someone like Sherlock.

Joan sunk back into the chair and ran her hand over her face, letting it come to rest on her cheek. _What would I get if I were the one getting a tattoo…_.she thought to herself, running through her memory banks for ideas.

It came to her just as Sherlock twisted his head to face her and said, “Not that I want to rush you in any way, but it a bit nippy in here.”

“I thought the _fresh air_ was supposed to be good for _relaxation_ and _thinking clearly._ ” Joan snipped, pushing Sherlock’s body more flat against the chair. She looked at the tattoo machine and black ink she had laid out. 

Despite having seen Sherlock perform this task numerous times when he touched up his own tattoos, Joan was concerned she was going to mess it up somehow. She filled a syringe with ink from the large bottle, glad she had practice from drawing blood all those years. Carefully, Joan filled several small, plastic ink caps and loaded them into the machine. 

“Yes, as you say when one is attempting to _think clearly_ , not when one is shirtless awaiting a tattoo.” Sherlock retorted.

Joan didn’t respond as she turned on the tattoo machine and leaned over Sherlock’s body. The buzzing sound of the machine brought her back to when she was 24 and contemplating a tattoo herself.

It was the middle of her second semester of medical school and with midterms over, Joan and her friends had decided to have a, as they called it at the time, “regretful” evening full of overpriced bar food, hard liquor and absolutely no studying.

Joan had lost count of how many tequila shots she had consumed by the time someone suggested they all go to the piercing shop across the street and get tattoos. Of course, it sounded like the best idea ever so Joan and a few others entered the establishment.

The walls were covered in designs and photos of completed tattoos with tags underneath indicating which artist in the shop had completed them. There was only one guy working that night, and he looked almost respectable to Joan minus the tattoo sleeves, eyebrow, lip and nose piercings, as well as the vibrant green plugs shoved into his ears.

He looked up at the giggling group of girls and rolled his eyes at them. “Why don’t you look through the books and see if you find anything you like. I’m almost done here.” He gestured to the muscular gentleman sitting in the chair in front of him, who was getting a tattoo of two snakes coming out of the eyes of a skull.

Joan and her friends flipped through the many books of designs and photographs of tattoos, animatedly discussing where the best place for a tattoo would be, where would be too promiscuous, where would be too covered. Joan looked at the group for a moment as a detached observer.

She didn’t know how to tell them that she was thinking of dropping out of medical school. That was a conversation she didn’t even know how to start. When Joan had first started school with them, everyone had gone on and on about how they had wanted to be a doctors their entire lives, how much they had wanted to change the face of medicine and help people. 

And while Joan too had shared these aspirations, now she was having her doubts. While she knew she was an excellent doctor, being a surgeon was a whole different ball game. It didn’t matter if you knew the entire textbook cover to cover. It didn’t matter how many articles you’ve read or trainings you attended. It didn’t matter if you were the top of your class or the bottom. All that mattered was you had someone’s life _literally_ in your hands. One small mistake, one small tremor in your hand, one small miscalculation could be very costly.

Joan was brought back to herself in the tattoo parlor when one of her friends shoved a design of a butterfly in her face, asking where she should get it. She shrugged and randomly pointed at her rib cage.

“ _Ohmygod_ Jooooooooooooooooooooooan. You’re so _RIGHT_ ,” her friend said, teetering a little on the orange plastic chair she was sitting on. She stood up quickly, almost falling over, as she went to the tattoo artist, proudly plastering the drawing against her rib cage.

Despite being more than a bit tipsy, Joan had it together enough to think, _That woman is going to save lives someday_.

That night Joan didn’t end up getting a tattoo, as it took her friend 45 minutes to get the butterfly on her rib cage – an event she still rags on their friend group for letting her do – and by then the excitement of it had faded for the other girls.

Joan did eventually open up to her friends about her doubts of becoming a successful doctor and they convinced her to stick with it. They shared their own doubts about medical school and confirmed everything Joan had known to be true. They said things like, “everyone feels this way” and “it’s a rite of passage everyone has to go through.”

Joan had revisited this particular evening many times since she had lost her patient and her life changed forever. If she had left medical school then, when she had had her doubts, Gerald would still be alive. He could have kept his son on track to stay in college. He would have been there for his next birthday.

By the time Joan had finished reminiscing, she had completed Sherlock’s tattoo. Joan turned off the tattoo machine, the sudden silence loud in the wake of it’s persistent buzzing, and leaned back, admiring her work. The rough outline of a dragonfly started back at her, bright black against Sherlock’s red, irritated skin. 

“What do you think?” Sherlock asked, without moving, still staring straight ahead into the kitchen. Joan was perplexed by his stillness. It was uncharacteristic of Sherlock, the most frenetic person she knew, to remain placid and unmoving when it wasn’t required of him. 

A small motion of his hands caught her attention. They were palm to palm, as if in prayer, and he continuously slid them back and forth, touching the fingertips of one hand to the knuckles on the other. This was one of the few habits Sherlock did when he was nervous – the only other time she had seen him do it was when they were entering the complex that housed Irene.

“Am I going to like it?” He asked tentatively, hands still sliding anxiously back and forth.

“There’s only one way to find out isn’t there?” Joan said, getting off of her seat and taking a small hand mirror from the floor in the corner of the room. It had somehow survived that late night Sherlock decided the power of feng shui was not helping him solve a rather frustrating case.

Joan handed Sherlock the mirror while she fetched another one from her bathroom. Turning the mirror so that it was facing Sherlock’s back, she gestured to Sherlock to raise his own. After fiddling with the angle briefly, Joan saw Sherlock grin as he said, “A dragonfly?”

“Once you named the bee after me, I started looking more into entomology and symbolism. A dragonfly symbolizes the opening of one’s eyes. That the mind is so strong it can...transcend the limitations of humanity.” Joan said, eyeing Sherlock’s face in the mirror. “It seemed...fitting.”

Sherlock closed his eyes and exhaled, his lips tugging upward into a smile. He put the mirror down so Joan couldn’t observe his face as he said, quietly, “Thank you, Joan. This,” he ran his fingers next the tattoo, “is a lovely gift.”

“Gift?” Joan asked, looking at Sherlock in confusion.

After a pause, Sherlock leapt from the chair and turned to face her.

“Today, Watson, marks the anniversary of the day we became partners. It felt…” his voice softened, “appropriate to commemorate the occasion.”

Joan was caught off guard. Had he been keeping track all this time? Well, it didn’t really surprise her that he remembered. It surprised her that he cared enough to want to celebrate it. Sherlock had made his feelings about celebrating milestones abundantly clear around his one-year sobriety anniversary.

Realizing she let her surprised pause extend into a silence, Joan responded, “So it is. I hadn’t realized.” _Had it really been a year already?_ she thought. _So much has changed._ Yet, paradoxically, it felt like ages. She felt like a different person than the one that had walked through the Brownstone’s doors, all the time ago.. “Happy...Partnership-a-versary Sherlock?”

Sherlock chuckled as he leaned over to pick up the tattoo machine.

“Alright. Your turn. Where do you want it?”

“Wait what? I’m not getting a tattoo.” Joan said, backing away from him a little.

“Consider this my gift to you. Not only will you have a tattoo, but I shall also explain my process and compare it to yours so you can learn from this experience. In fact, I will even tell you a new fact about the dragonfly.” Sherlock replied, a self-satisfied look forming on his face.

Joan sighed, crossed her arms and said, “What would that be?”

“The dragonfly also symbolizes the defeat of self created illusions. It focuses on developing abilities by realizing your true self. Casting off any doubts or pains that impede that progress and discovery.” Sherlock said, adding more ink to the machine’s cartridge. “That seems like something you’ve gone through. At least to me.”

Joan thought for a moment before saying, “No tramp stamps, Sherlock.”


End file.
